


Spark

by NB_Cecil



Series: “God” was Weighed in the Balance and Found Wanting [2]
Category: Star Trek: The Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Camping, Caring!Spock, Crisis of Faith, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Grumpy!Bones, Hurt/Comfort, Kirk sleeps through this btw so he’s not really “there” even though I listed him as a character, M/M, McSpones, Mind Meld, Missing Scene, Needy!Bones, Non-Sexual Intimate Touch, Spones Arguing, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, Touching, Vulcan Kisses, Vulcan Mind Melds, Vulcan Touch Telepathy, Vulcan bondmates, chosen family, spones - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-19
Updated: 2020-02-19
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:15:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22804684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NB_Cecil/pseuds/NB_Cecil
Summary: While the credits roll at the conclusion ofStar Trek: V, McCoy, Spock and Kirk are back at Yosemite, enjoying their belated shore leave free from interruptions. Butcosmic thoughtsare still weighing on McCoy’s mind.
Relationships: James T. Kirk/Leonard "Bones" McCoy/Spock, Leonard "Bones" McCoy/Spock
Series: “God” was Weighed in the Balance and Found Wanting [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1639423
Comments: 4
Kudos: 55





	Spark

“ _Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting..._ ” McCoy mumbled, eyes half-closed.

“ _Daniel_ : chapter five, verse twenty-seven.” Spock murmured back.

They had long since finished their singing. Spock had packed away his harp, and the trio had tidied their campsite and settled down to sleep, the campfire dwindling to embers. Kirk snored lightly behind Spock, his back pressed against the vulcan’s back. Spock could feel the vibration in his rib cage through the double layer of sleeping bags. He lifted his arm and patted McCoy, lying on his other side, guiding him to shuffle closer on their adjoined bedrolls, into his embrace. He brushed his fingertips against McCoy’s cheek, slipping through the human’s mental barriers as McCoy lowered them in response to the touch.

“What if that really _was_ Eden, or _Sha Ka Ree_ , and we made a terrible mistake?” McCoy fretted.

 _Hush, Leonard_ , Spock projected the gentle admonishment directly into McCoy’s mind, spreading his own presence wide over the choppy surface of McCoy’s consciousness. 

“But we can’t know for sure...”

Spock recognised the signs of his _t’hy’la_ working himself up to a state of high emotion. _Indeed, we cannot know_. Spock slowed his own breathing, the calming effects on his own autonomic nervous system flowing through the psychic connection to take effect on McCoy’s. He waited while the surface of McCoy’s consciousness calmed to a moderate ripple. _Breathe, dearest, breathe_ , he encouraged. 

_We can’t know... We can’t know..._ McCoy’s mind repeated the words like a mantra.

“Tell me, Leonard,” Spock spoke aloud, softly, his face so close to McCoy’s the tips of their noses touched. “For as long as I have known you, you have had faith in a single, benign, Creator-God.” In the darkness, McCoy chewed his lower lip, while Spock quieted the eddies of anxiety whipping themselves up in McCoy’s mind. “Would that God, whose presence you have felt all your life, whom you know so well, exact petty vengeance on lives he holds so precious?”

“No,” McCoy conceded, “but if I was wrong...? If God isn’t benign, if he doesn’t cherish life above all else...” He fumbled his arms free of his sleeping bag and wrapped them around Spock, pulling him close with a desperation Spock could feel through both the strength of the human’s grip and the wave of panic building in his subconscious. “...Then my faith, my identity, the reason I’m here, now, on shore leave with a vulcan and a human from Iowa, not—I don’t know—working in a bar in some backstreet in Toccoa—the reason I _became_ a doctor, dammit!—I had faith in a God who taught me the most valuable thing of all is life...!” McCoy’s voice rose in pitch and volume as his speech progressed.

“Hush, hush, you’ll wake Jim,” Spock soothed, but McCoy was well past listening. Inside McCoy’s mind, Spock peered through the semi-opaque layers of consciousness. _Where is his faith?_ He asked himself. Normally, McCoy’s faith would be smouldering on the boarder between his conscious and subconscious, waiting for some injustice—or the threat of one—to ignite it. Now, Spock couldn’t find it in its usual place. He probed further, into the upper levels of McCoy’s subconscious, and out to the further reaches, where the human habitually banished thoughts he didn’t wish to examine too closely. _Ah, here!_ Spock caught sight of a thin, guttering spark, flickering almost to nothing as soon as Spock noticed it.

McCoy went on: “...The sanctity of life! I’ve traveled the Galaxy, built my career—my whole life’s purpose—around upholding this value, only to find that God doesn’t give a damn about life!”

“Leonard, hush... breathe...” Spock intoned. “...Breathe...” Cupping the doctor’s skull in his hand, he pressed his fingertips to the back of his head and rubbed soothing circles. “We don’t know that _was_ God. In fact, the available evidence suggests the entity was an imposter. Logic would dictate—.”

“ _Logic!_ ” McCoy spat derisively, jerking out of Spock’s embrace and hefting himself up on his elbows, the sudden movement interrupting their psychic connection. 

Spock silently cursed his foolishness in invoking logic in the middle of an argument with the doctor. He sat up and reached out a hand, two fingers raised in a conciliatory gesture of intimacy and sought out McCoy’s arm in the dark. McCoy’s demeanour softened at his touch and he returned the gesture by pressing his own fingers to the vulcan’s. “Alright,” he grumbled. “Come back in? I miss you when we’re not connected.” He lowered his mental guard and Spock slipped back into his mind.

McCoy took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Spock briefly paused in his search for the fragile spark of faith he’d caught a glimpse of before to acknowledge the doctor’s calming himself. “I’m proud of you for learning to do that,” he murmured, as McCoy’s anxiety receded once more. McCoy made a small sound in the back of his throat and shrugged away his awkwardness at the praise. Spock could see the spark guttering weakly in a far reach of McCoy’s mind. He stretched out his own consciousness toward it. “Do you want to have faith, Leonard?” He asked.

“I—.” McCoy’s breath hitched on a sob. “I don’t know.”

“You are at a fork in the road of your life, _t’hy’la_. The path you choose will fundamentally alter who you are.”

“I want to...” McCoy swallowed thickly. “...But how can I have faith when I came face-to-face with what I thought was God and he violated the principle I hold most dear, harmed those I care most about—my _t’hylara_?”

“Let us examine the facts, Leonard.” Spock spoke softly, reaching tendrils of his consciousness like a hand toward the flickering spark of faith. McCoy tensed slightly but put up no resistance.

“Alright,” McCoy agreed. “Facts and faith don’t sit too well together, but go on?”

“Before we passed through the Great Barrier, your belief in a benign Creator-God was absolute, yes?”

“Yeah...” McCoy nodded in the dark.

“And on what evidence did you base this belief?”

“I don’t know, Spock!” McCoy bristled at the question. “It’s faith! It doesn’t _need_ evidence.”

“Ok,” Spock soothed. “So, you had no evidence on which to base your faith in the existence of a benign Creator-God before we passed through the Great Barrier.”

“Mmm...” McCoy fidgeted on the hard ground, uneasy in admitting it.

“And, now,” Spock continued, “we’ve met an entity who didn’t live up to your expectation of God and—most probably—wasn’t God.”

“Yeah...” McCoy agreed.

“But the existence of a fraud doesn’t negate the existence of the real thing.”

“Huh, logic.” McCoy snorted.

Spock slipped the edges of his consciousness gently under the little spark and held it as lightly as he could so that it was free to flit away from him should it wish to.

“Be gentle, love.” McCoy implored in a whisper.

“I will,” Spock promised.

“So you’re sayin’ God might still be out there?” McCoy asked.

“Yes, and your faith, should it survive, would still be entirely devoid of logic.”

“ _Spock_ ,” McCoy admonished him teasingly, his hand finding Spock’s shoulder in the dark and pulling him close. He pressed a kiss to the vulcan’s cheek. “You’re trying to defeat me using logic again.”

“No,” Spock countered, “I’m trying to _help_ you using your own illogic.”

McCoy thought for a while. Spock waited, the tiny spark bobbing nervously on the tendrils of his consciousness. “Y’know,” McCoy broke the silence, “a Twentieth Century Earth theologian wrote: _for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing_.”

“Douglas Adams,” Spock replied. “Not a theologian.” The spark of faith fizzed and and danced on Spock’s outstretched consciousness.

“Whatever,” McCoy grumbled. “The point is if I lose my faith, can my concept of God exist at all without it?”

“That is a question for the theologians, not us scientists.” 

“I want that version of God to exist. I think I’d rather not take the chance if I can help it.”

“Are you sure?” Spock gently caressed the fizzing spark in McCoy’s mind.

“I’m sure.”

With great care, Spock wrapped his consciousness around the spark and pulled it in toward the centre, and up through the conscious levels of McCoy’s mind. McCoy groaned and slumped forward onto Spock’s chest. Spock caught him in his arms.

“Please...” McCoy begged, his face pressed into Spock’s shirt. 

_Patience, dearest_. Spock spoke wordlessly. 

With the spark on the surface, Spock was better able to perceive its fragility—one small slip and he would crush it out forever—but also its tenacity, its devotion to—no, its _need_ for—survival. _Leonard, you have to want this_. McCoy heaved a great racking sob against his chest. “Do you _want_ this?” Spock asked aloud, fisting his hand in the back of McCoy’s shirt. “Do you truly want this? I can’t do it without your help.”

The surface of McCoy’s mind went as still as glass. Looking down, Spock could see dark shapes moving though the lower levels.

“Together...” McCoy whispered.

“Yes, we can do this together.” Spock repeated.

The dark shapes swirled together and coalesced into one mass, rising through the centre of McCoy’s mind.

 _Careful_ , Spock cautioned. _It’s fragile_.

The mass stilled and McCoy drew several deep, ragged, panting breaths. Spock twisted the fabric of McCoy’s shirt further round his fist. “I’ve got you...”

The dark mass began to rise through McCoy’s mind again, on a zig-zagging course this time. Waves rippled across the surface as it neared, strengthening with its approach. The little spark spluttered as they buffeted it. Spock bent his consciousness into a protective barrier to shield McCoy’s delicate faith from the worst of the onslaught. _Steady, Leonard, steady_. 

The mass was almost at the surface now, still zig-zagging and sending bigger waves rolling across the now-stormy surface, but slowing. Spock’s body clung to McCoy’s trembling frame while his mind clung to the tiny spark, both balancing a desperate need to protect with the restraint required to avoid crushing the fragile forms they embraced. The mass came to a stop inches from the surface, and with a great, writhing, heave, accompanied by a wail from McCoy loud enough to wake half the wildlife in Yosemite, sent the biggest wave yet crashing over Spock’s consciousness, spilling through their connection into the shallows of Spock’s own mind, and engulfing the spark. Spock counted his breaths through the disorientation of the onslaught and, once he had regained his psychic composure, gently pushed the overspill from McCoy’s consciousness back into its proper place in the human’s own mind. Apprehensively, he relaxed the barrier he had erected around McCoy’s faith.

“Spock...” McCoy tugged urgently at Spock’s hand, pulling it up to his cheek and pressing it against the stubble there. 

Spock snapped out of his trance: inside McCoy’s mind the meagre fragile spark had transformed into a small, healthy, yellow flame, like that of a candle.

“Leonard,” Spock stroked his cheek affectionately. He could just see the outline of the doctor’s face in the pale glow of the first light of the sunrise. “Are you ok?”

McCoy shivered in the pre-dawn chill and pulled his sleeping bag up around his shoulders. “Yes...” he said, “I have my faith again.”

Behind them, Kirk gave a loud, grunting snore.

“Jim!” McCoy chuckled. “He’ll sleep through anything.”

“Indeed.”

In McCoy’s mind, Spock released his hold on the little flame, giving it a gentle push back down toward the border between the human’s conscious and subconscious. He held up his hand, fingers split in the vulcan gesture of friendship. 

Wincing at a twinge of complaint from his arthritic knuckles, McCoy mirrored the gesture and pressed his palm to Spock’s.

**Author's Note:**

>  _T’hy’la_ : friend-lover-lifelong companion, blood brother/sister; soulmate; soul-brother/sister.  
>  _T’hylara_ : 2 - 5 friends; plural of t'hy'la  
> (Source: [ _Vulcan Language Dictionary_](https://www.starbase-10.de/vld/).)
> 
> Spock is _well-versed in the classics_ , including Douglas Adams, of course ;)


End file.
